Musharraf pledges polls by February 15

Pakistan will hold elections by February 15, state media quoted President Pervez Musharraf as saying yesterday, as he moved to quell global outrage over his imposition of a state of emergency.
The statement came hours after US President George W Bush telephoned Musharraf to urge him to repeal emergency rule, hold polls that were due in January and quit as army chief of the nuclear-armed Islamic republic.
Former premier Benazir Bhutto however pledged to continue with a planned protest on Friday in the garrison city of Rawalpindi despite arrest of hundreds of her supporters, calling Musharraf's announcement "vague".
"General elections in the country would be held by February 15 next year," the official Associated Press of Pakistan quoted Musharraf as saying after chairing a meeting of the National Security Council.
State television also reported that General Musharraf renewed his pledge to give up his military uniform before taking the oath for his second term in office, but did not give a date.
Musharraf however will not take the oath and quit the army until the Supreme Court rules on the validity of his victory in an October 6 presidential election that gave him another five-year term.
Government nerves that the court verdict could go against him are thought to be the main reason that he declared the emergency, but Musharraf has since purged the court of hostile judges, including the chief justice.
Musharraf imposed the state of emergency on Saturday, citing growing Islamic militancy and a meddlesome judiciary. He suspended the constitution and clamped curbs on the media.
The report of an election date came hours after the attorney general, Malik Mohammad Qayyum, told AFP that the polls would be in February.
"Elections will be held in February, it has been decided," attorney general Qayyum, the government's chief lawyer, told AFP. "The emergency will be lifted in one or two months."
Pakistani police however stepped up a crackdown on the opposition, rounding up hundreds of Bhutto's supporters and charging four people with treason -- an offence punishable by death.
The move has sparked days of sporadic protests and led to more than 3,000 arrests, the latest involving supporters of Benazir's Pakistan People's Party (PPP).
Bhutto's Pakistan People's Party said its activists were targeted to head off Friday's protest in Rawalpindi, near Islamabad, and a planned "long march" from Lahore to the capital next week.
"Well over 600 party activists have been arrested and many of our leaders have gone underground. The crackdown is continuing," senior party leader Raza Rabbani told AFP.
Police sources confirmed the arrests of only 140 PPP workers.
Police warned that suicide bombers had infiltrated Rawalpindi ahead of Bhutto's protest.
"We have very specific intelligence reports that up to eight suicide bombers have entered Rawalpindi," city police chief Saud Aziz told AFP.
"Naturally they will target big public meetings like what you have seen in Karachi," he added. Twin suicide blasts killed 139 people in Karachi at Bhutto's October 18 homecoming parade, which ended her eight years in exile.
Many in Pakistan however regard Bhutto's confrontational stance with scepticism, expecting she will still reach a proposed power-sharing deal with Musharraf that would bring two US-friendly political leaders under one banner.
Meanwhile in Karachi, authorities charged three politicians from small opposition parties and a trade union leader with sedition for making speeches against Musharraf's imposition of emergency rule, court officials said.
The four were remanded in custody for two weeks by a court.
On Wednesday, Karachi police registered sedition cases against eight lawyers, including a woman. The lawyers have gone into hiding.
Earlier, in a sign of growing international anger at emergency rule, Bush said he had given Musharraf -- a crucial US ally in the "war on terror" -- a message that was "very plain, very easy to understand."
"And that is: The United States wants you to have the elections as scheduled and take your uniform off."
Pakistan's foreign ministry put a more positive spin on the conversation, saying the US leader had praised Musharraf's leadership but voiced "US concerns over return to civilian democratic rule and early elections."
It admitted that Bush "mentioned about US concerns over return to civilian democratic rule and early elections, as had been originally planned by the president."
But it said he "showed understanding when the president informed him about the difficult circumstances that led to the proclamation of emergency in the country."
While Britain and France also demanded that polls be held on time, senior US officials warned that Washington had no option but to pursue its long-term relationship with Islamabad because of its frontline role in fighting Taliban and al-Qaeda extremists.